


Breathe

by HSR (helena_s_renn)



Category: The Lord of the Rings RPF
Genre: Breathplay, Dark, Hot Tub, M/M, Near Death Experiences, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Rimming, Strangulation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-05-07
Updated: 2006-05-07
Packaged: 2021-03-01 18:33:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,313
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23661613
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/helena_s_renn/pseuds/HSR
Summary: There was no doubt about it. Sean loved it when Viggo struggled.
Relationships: Sean Bean/Viggo Mortensen
Kudos: 4





	Breathe

**Author's Note:**

> Pay attention to the tags.  
> As always this is fiction. It never happened.  
> Cross-posting from my old LJ. Original publication date used.

There was no doubt about it. Sean loved it when Viggo struggled. It was only occasionally that the need arose in him to reverse the charges, and even less often that he acted on it. Something nagged at him. Things were good. So why would he want things like he’d been on about lately? There were risks, definite risks.

Mental pictures would flash through his mind sometimes, of ways he wanted Viggo, things he wanted to do to him. They were graphic; some might find them disturbing. It was always in high-contrast, strobe-light effect, black-and-white with traces of red. Not blood, not burning skin, but the red haze of near-gone consciousness.

If it happened, Sean was prepared via his own reading-research and private CPR classes to do whatever was needed. Though he’d never once voiced his wishes, he could say up front that he wouldn’t blame the other man for a negative reaction; such a thing involved the trust of more than his heart or his body, but his very life.

He found himself longingly fixated with the huge Jacuzzi pool he’d had installed. These dark, impossible fantasies made him melancholy, then irritable. He’d be a wild, mauling hellcat one day, submissive the next, then go through a fortnight of total disinterest. Used to his mood swings, Viggo didn’t pry until it affected his sex drive.

A few gentle questions were enough to set Sean’s teeth on edge. He didn’t want to talk about it; he just wanted it… wanted that. After yet another session of Sean bent over, thinking of the great pyramid of Egypt or some such and limp as a wet noodle, Viggo finally tired of it, slapped his ass, and snapped, “Let me know when you want me in real life again!”

Sean’s fantasy was to first take Viggo in that hot tub, fuck him hard till they both made a mess in the water. The finale was always the act of holding him under till his lover’s body went from resistant to panicked and combative to slack. At the end, the air would burble up through Viggo’s lips to the surface of the water.

Then, he wanted to lift the lifeless but still warm and wet body with its sodden lungs but still-beating heart and simply play god with him. Rebirth by Sean. Oh, he knew the cost, if for some reason his resuscitation failed. The concept of Viggo like this, as Aragorn had held the symbolic place for Tolkien, filled him with urgency.

Once. Just once. And once he was dead and resurrected, Viggo would, so Sean imagined, return to his rightful place as center of the universe, lord and master.

The night he’d finally told Viggo about it, Sean broke down, as he’d rarely done in his adult life: during his first marriage vows, at the births of his children, when his last divorce was shoved onto him, when Viggo first fucked him. Through it, Viggo sat calmly on his favorite bench on the deck, stroking Sean’s hair as the blond man knelt at his feet, put his head in his lap, and spoke haltingly.

Later, Sean couldn’t have repeated ninety percent of his words. The main gist of it might’ve been something like, “Tired of hiding this… want something deeper, more extreme… please don’t leave me…” Between mumbled pleadings, he apologized again and again.

Viggo said little, thoughtful little humming noises made up most of his half of the conversation. When no more words poured forth, he gently extricated himself and padded barefoot across cedar planks to the man-made pool. There, he turned and dropped his clothes. He wasn’t even semi-hard, his eyes round and scared, his shoulders tense, a slight tremor to his hand that hadn’t been there just minutes before. “Better do this thing before I chicken out. I trust you know what you’re doing. While I might not be very significant in the grand scheme of things, I rather enjoy being alive.” Sean wondered how anyone so unique and remarkable saw himself as insignificant. “And I like being a dad,” Viggo added, which ripped Sean’s heart out, “…And I’m sure I’d miss you.”

It was a time-honored custom to wash the body upon its corporeal death. In, and by, that hot tub, Sean washed Viggo in various ways—with the chlorinated water of course, and his lips anointed every part of Viggo’s body he could get at.

The sun set, darkness shrouded them while Sean laid Viggo down on a seating ledge on the lip of the pool and spent hours simply kissing his lover’s body. In a way, it felt like he was taking a chance of this being goodbye, though he hoped to god that it wasn’t so. Slowly, he worked his way over every unique feature in unhurried, sensual torture. Starting with a smooth patch of skin on the inner crest of Viggo’s hip, Sean worked his way toward Viggo’s groin. He skirted the awakening flesh, however, and made his way down Viggo’s thigh and calf, slithering from his original place beside him to down between his legs. Kneeling, Sean ran a line of tiny nips, licking each one, down the whole limb in concentric back-and-forth circles.

The tension thickened around them. Viggo’s moans rose into the night air. When Sean looked up from the narrow focus of the dark hairs above Viggo’s ankle bone, he noticed how the other man’s cock was completely engorged, flexing against his furry belly the way a stallion’s does in the presence of a mare in season. He would’ve normally gone directly there with an open mouth, but today he methodically kissed and nipped through meandering woodland trails between the hairs on Viggo’s other leg, breathing hot puffs of air along the back of the ticklish knee and nudging the man’s muscled thighs father apart.

“Baby…” Viggo moaned. He tried to sit and reach for Sean, but he deflected Viggo's hands and said only, “Wait.”

With that, he dipped down his head and slipped an outstretched tongue into the space just under Viggo’s balls, and then traced the raised line of his perineum. The controlled, measured breathing of the other man hitched almost violently. Raising his knees, Viggo rolled his hips upwards, the unspoken request shivering the carefully-guarded core of Sean’s lust. Viggo’s scent filled his nose, which pressed up under the hint of cleft in the delicate sac.

“Oh god…”

Spread thighs stared to shake. Sean laid his hands there, fingertips playing against the flat, shifting tendons. With the tip of his tongue, Sean explored every wrinkled fold; he kissed the musky skin to release more of Viggo’s unique scent, and then he licked it up.

“Please…!” Viggo groaned, flexing his hips again.

“Not yet… I’ve only done half your body.”

“You haven’t done me at all yet!”

“But we don’t want it to be over too early.” Sean swiped his tongue once across the puckers lower down. Viggo actually squealed, a wild-animal sound that seemed to hover over them.

Then he spoke. “I assure you, I’m good for more than once.” Viggo’s crazily color-changing eyes spitted the Brit, who had to fadmit that he was right. He should be spending this time giving to his lover as he never had before—just in case. As answer, he hitched himself up and licked briskly across the very tip of the swollen, purple shaft that lay twitchily on its bed of crisp belly hair. Immediately, the darker man was thrusting upwards into his mouth, and Sean let him. He set himself free, opening his mouth and his throat while the flattened, rounded, mushroom-shaped head wedged in further and further with each stroke. As he could between breaths, Sean flicked his tongue over the slick sides of the shaft. Viggo was so hard, Sean could have taken his pulse through the stretched-tight skin.

“Mmmgh!” Viggo closed his eyes, tossed his head from side to side. The moonlight caught the silvery strands at his temples. Sean was stuck by the fact of their mortality; like idealistic kids, they’d never talked about not going on forever. Well, except he had his little fantasies. He almost wept as it hit him, what life without Viggo would be… always like something huge was missing. He covered his reaction by swallowing Viggo down to the base and belatedly sliding three fingers back into the man’s fluttering passage.

“Oh, fuck, Sean,” Viggo bleated. His thighs snapped open wide, his pelvis bouncing haphazardly, his ass cheeks flexing and relaxing. Inside him, Sean made sure to rub relentlessly at his sweet spot. He’d wanted to go slow, but now he couldn’t stop himself from pushing Viggo to release as fast and hard as he could go. Somewhere over his head, the beginnings of yammerings, “Oh my god… oh my god… Ai! Por Dios…”

A long shot of cream hit the back of his throat. Sean swallowed convulsively which brought several gasping breaths and a hoarse scream of his name. All the while, Viggo’s cock pumped load after load of juice, which he practically inhaled and after the end, Sean sucked so hard that Viggo finally had to extract himself with a flinch and his fist in the blond mane as a warning.

“Oh!” Sean released the exhausted phallus from his lips with a huge slurp. “Lost myself just a little bit… sorry!

“S’okay...” Viggo drawled, lazy-eyed. He made no move to change position… his legs still splayed wide and Sean’s long digits in his hole. He clenched once, seemingly bemused, but Sean left them. He still had work to do, now that Viggo’s balls would be very sensitive right after having discharged such a payload, he nuzzled at the loose hairy sac with the sides of his face. The fingers clutching his hair yanked sharply, so he stopped and asked, “Too much?”

“Yes, but I liked it…”

“Yer were loud…before.”

“Mm-hm… Thanks to you... and your wicked mouth.” Viggo seemed to be at loose ends, so Sean decided he’d try to bring those scattered thoughts back to a cohesive whole, one touch at a time. Levering himself to lie on top of Viggo, his face at about the level of the middle of the breastbone, Sean put his tongue to work again. While the patterns of hair were a little distracting, there were rewards to be had. The soft, smoothly tan swatches of skin on ticklish sides, scattered old scars that proved even touchier; there were two little pebbles with their protective rings that responded beautifully to his tongue, by getting so, so hard, their owner broke out in more needy moans.

Sean could feel against his own belly how Viggo’s arousal was growing again. He worked his way down the flat but trembling abdomen, side to side. Again, Sean marveled at the frailty of life—nothing but skin and membranes to protect his vitals.

Mostly silent of beyond words till then, Viggo surprised him with, “What are you doing, Sean… I mean, really…?”

“I… I’m not sure.” Or at least, he didn’t know how to explain.

“I think it’s Last Rites, Sean.” The man wouldn’t quit saying his name. Every time he did, it made the connection between them stronger, and here Sean’s inclinations were to test that bond, to cut it, snap it. So that made Viggo right. “Rituals, Sean, are important to human beings… always have been, though we deny it. So, it’s no wonder you ask for more. Dark as hell… but more. I’ve always seen you as a spiritual man.” The words thundered through Sean’s brain, challenging him to answer in some way.

“Me?” he had to say it jokingly. He nudged Viggo nearer the water. While the idea resonated, he knew that by and large, his lover had more of a distinction for that kind of thing. “Well, I have another ritual I might like to do. Into the water with you.”

Something like muted terror once again sprang into Viggo’s eyes. They went grey; he closed them, but he sat and swung his legs in. Sean splashed in as well, hissing as the water, though warm, enveloped his erection. He wanted to save his release for… for things unknown.

“Lay out in the water,” he instructed. “In my arms.” He held them out before him, hands palms-up and open.

Hesitantly, holding the side of the pool, Viggo did as he was asked. When Sean’s arms came up under his back and thighs in the bubbling water, he flinched again, but Sean caught him before he went under. “I can float, Sean… just let go; I’ll be alright.”

But Sean wouldn’t, not totally. “Put your head back,” he asked. And then, for reasons unknown to even himself, he cradled the man with his one arm, the other cupping water to pour over Viggo’s forehead again and again. He looked at the longish hair slicked back from the high forehead. Viggo’s eyes closed and his short lashes fell against his eye sockets. The lines across his forehead and around his mouth tried to relax and smooth, but background worry was not allowing for it. It seemed so familiar, this act. Where had he seen it before?

Viggo’s mouth opened just a little. He seemed on the verge of saying something. All was stillness around them now… the pace as slow and focused as his hand dipping the water and the droplets sliding back down into the pool. “…In the name of the father, the son, and the holy spirit…” It was Viggo who let go the whisper of the incantation. Sean could only echo, “Amen.”

Even between them, such moments were precious few, a mere point in time not meant to last. Sitting up in the water, then straddling Sean’s lap, Viggo sat so they touched from chest to groin. He hadn’t been aroused any more till just then; the feel of his lover’s hard length, of his tightened balls against his, and the whole front of the soft, buttery skin with its underlying layer of hard muscle underneath gave a certain tingle to his unwilling body. Or rather, it was his mind that was unwilling; his survival instincts were screaming at him. “You planning to use that? You’ve been waiting a long time tonight.” Viggo rocked his hips forward.

“I might… but don’t think that you can distract me forever, either.” He pulled the other man against him, both of his hands curving around Viggo to clutch at his ass. His darkly-tanned lover leaned in; it was hard to say who took whose mouth. Lips sealed, they stroked each other’s bodies, urgent. Sean had earlier touched most of the front; now he concentrated on the back. From Viggo’s neck, down his spine, his long fingers traced all the little ripples and bumps. He so loved the sensation of the smooth muscles in his lover’s back moving in waves in response to his touch. The other palm he kept cupped tightly around one firm cheek, squeezing rhythmically in time with the pitching of their hips.

It was like some kind of switch flipped in his head. He knew what he needed to do next: something he’d never done before, would regret not, if…

Next time they came apart from, Sean took Viggo by the shoulders and turned him around in his lap. He surged up and pushed the other man across the pool and positioned him on his knees on the bench opposite.

“Vig… we’re gonna have to get outta the water for a bit.”

When Viggo glanced back over his shoulder, Sean’s eyes were so intense upon him, he could hardly breathe. “Okay,” he managed. The British man was right behind him, his hands back on Viggo’s ass. The kneading motions were frantic. Sean did that sometimes without thought; he did it with his toes, too, when he was getting sucked off. Viggo arched; the cue taken, fingers edged toward his cleft.

While he could and did cuss like a drunken sailor when the sex was really good, it was a rarity for Sean to articulate specific directives or mechanics. “Get on your feet, on that step. I need you to…” his nostrils flared, “bend over. Gotta get your ready for…” They both knew what.

But Sean had one more surprise. Viggo rose carefully and bent at the waist, putting his chest down against the wooden ledge rimming the tub. But instead of fingers slicked in cold lube and a blunt cockhead prodding him, he felt something warm and wet. Shocked, he let out a gasping, “Sean!” Swiveling his head around again confirmed that Sean had not stood; he was still up to his shoulders in the water, his face mostly obscured by Viggo’s buttcheeks. However, his rather beaky nose was buried in the crease and his heavily lined, hooded eyes glittered like two fresh-cut emeralds up at Viggo. And then once again, the tongue. It was like something detached from Sean, or with a will of its own.

Since they’d met, Sean’s tongue had been a source of fantasy for Viggo. He proved adept at using it, too, but had never done this thing, and Viggo had never asked. It was always more satisfying when he waited for his less-experienced lover to come to the decision to do something on his own. True, Viggo had kissed him first, and had guided Sean down the path till he allowed himself to be taken. But he’d never forget things like the first time Sean had sucked him off—inept and gagging, yes, but just the idea that his reluctant-at-first partner really did want him to have the kind of pleasure he was used to dishing out.

Now there were those first tentative licks, and then the whole organ pried him open, slithered into his hole, and squirmed there frantically. Viggo lurched and trembled, trying to get his legs further apart without slipping. Five long digits grabbed each of side of his ass, pulling the rounded buttocks further apart. Sean withdrew his tongue to lick around the edges of the slightly looser opening. He’d braced his forearms along the insides of Viggo’s V-ed thighs, holding him still and utterly exposed to his view. Viggo wasn’t anything bordering on smooth; he didn’t get waxed like Sean himself did unless it was required for a film. It didn’t matter; Sean plunged right in again, sucking on his ring muscle while teasing the inside with his tongue-tip. Though he took more weight on his chest and stuck his ass up—he couldn’t help it—Sean was driving him crazy, Viggo couldn’t stop waggling his butt and twisting his spine. When Sean had to come up for air, he complained, “Stop wigglin’, you bugger!”

“Can’t help it… Fuck, Sean…!” That slick, warm tongue slid into him again, as far as Sean could extend it, out, back in again. It most definitely reached the hidden sweet spot, evidenced by a lurch and filthy babbling that Sean understood maybe a quarter of.

He withdrew his stretched tongue again. “Like that, do you?”

“Oh god, yeah,” Viggo breathed. “But… you’re never…” He groaned, long and loud.

“Today I do… and more yet.” From his perspective, Sean could see how his low-swinging balls were drawing up tight. He meticulously bathed them with the flat of his tongue. Inside the sacs, hardened glands were so responsive to the swabbing licks; every minute little hitch of Viggo’s body was some kind of uneasy victory.

Under the water, Sean felt like his cock was fit to burst; the warm liquid caressed his body, making him buoyant—some parts more-so than others. If he didn’t concentrate, he’d lose himself to that, and he had work to do. Stabbing little pokes and swipes to the exterior of the dusky hole caused it to contract and pound with raised blood.

Obvious connotations to other parts of their bodies led Sean to reach for the bottle of lube floating near him, placed purposefully in the water to warm it. Uncapping it, he let some drizzle into the spread crack, pushing more and more of slickness inside. The groans coming from his partner spurred him to hurry, but he took the necessary time to make sure his fingers, three of them, went in easily. Whatever damage he caused today, it was not going to be from a too-fast taking.

Finally, Viggo was ready. Sean burst from the water and fitted himself to the well-lubed hole in front of him. Once again, the sapphire-dark eyes were beaded on him, full of lust and still that fear. Sean leaned forward, pinning Viggo down. He put both hands on the tense shoulders and set about entering the bottom man. He felt some scratchy hairs against his cock, and the slick, hot hole he’d prepared. It took a little rooting about, moving his hips experimentally. The sensitized head of his long-suffering erection found the place where he’d breach Viggo’s body; he went in slowly, with little rocking thrusts. Below, his captive struggled, whether with him or against him, he wasn’t positive.

“Get in the water.” This was his second request of the same. Viggo pushed hard with his arms; they stood and Sean took them backwards into the deepest part of the pool. Impaled on him now, with no leverage, Viggo was totally at Sean’s mercy for his pleasure… and Sean did not hesitate to reach around to fist his renewed erection. He pulled his lover back against him. “For Christsakes, Viggo… How the hell can you be so sexy?”

In the water, he was forced to go slower; every movement took more force. What would it be like to let it go into the water? Would it require a supreme exertion of his balls to pump out several loads of his seed into the surrounding liquid? That imagined pleasure, he could give to Viggo, and soon, for he could feel his orgasm approaching despite his best efforts to hold it off. He pushed the body before him down against the steps and held him there, forcing his knees wider and his hips into faster bucking. Viggo clenched around him; he knew that it was on purpose. The underside of his cockhead rubbed firmly against the inner bump of Viggo’s prostate; choked cries rose from the man being fucked. “I’m sorry… sorry…” Images of him forcing the dark head under the water and holding there finally made their appearance as he neared his peak.

Viggo spat out a mouthful of water and gasped, “What for?”

Sean didn’t answer. Instead, he backed up slightly and did what he’d imagined and fantasized all this time, what Viggo had given him permission to do. The finality of these last thrusts, and then his explosion of cum and violence, signaled the shift from loving sex, to deadly sport. Bursting, feeling the rush of his essence spurting and spurting from the depths of his spasming balls up the tiny slit he came and peed from, the relief combined with his need to let his long-hidden desires take over. He slammed into Viggo one more time; though they were wet all over already, he could tell by the throbbing in his fist and the thicker, slipperier, warmer liquid being jetting into the waters of the pool that the man under him had let it go as well.

Grabbing Viggo by the back of the neck, he shoved him down under the water. As he’d expected, the man struggled ferociously against him. Elbows battered against his ribs; feet churned the water, aiming to knock his legs out from under him. Having thought about it at length in advance, Sean tried a few of the moves and holds that had worked for him long ago in his street-fighting days. Here, they all remained ineffective; he and Viggo were too evenly matched, and too slippery. Before the wily, adrenalized man could manage to throw him off, Sean used his full weight on Viggo’s back to hold him under the surface. He disengaged, hitched himself upward, and wrapped his legs around Viggo’s waist from behind, making a pincers of his thighs and bearing him down, down. “Goddammit… goddammit, Viggo just go…” he growled; no one answered.

After half a minute, the struggles grew more and more feeble… then the man under him went limp. Unlocking his legs, Sean turned the body over, saw lifeless wide-open eyes, the remains of a petrified expression, a gaping mouth obviously full of water. Of course he’d thought about this, too, but it was nothing like the reality. Fuck! What if…? What if it was too late already? He hauled the unresponsive body, so heavy and waterlogged, from the pool; if his flight-or-fight instincts hadn’t kicked in the minute Viggo went limp, he’d not have had the strength to do that. The drowned body reminded him of a big sturgeon he’d pulled out of the river once—pallid and slippery.

He was running on vitriol now. At himself. He’d just had to go and do it, didn’t he? Shaking his mate, he rolled him from front to back, then pushed down on his belly, needing to get the water out of him. It didn’t work; Sean panicked even more. A hand on the paled chest revealed a heart still ticking for the moment, but without oxygen soon, he’d be permanently damaged. “C’mon… c’mon dammit… Viggo, I know you can hear me!” He’d learned in his classes this was often true, that the soul did not pass so quickly. “Come back dammit! You said you wanted to live…” He pressed down on Viggo’s chest, then remembered not to do that yet.

With fingers that seemed too slow and clumsy for this action of utmost consequence, he pinched Viggo’s nostrils shut and leaned down to blow air into his lungs, hoping there wasn’t so much water that his efforts were useless. Nothing. He tried again, his eyes starting to sting. Viggo’s chest rose and fell once, with the life-giving air Sean breathed into him, but that was all. “Viggo…” he sobbed. “Come back… please…”

All the maudlin, over-dramatized death scenes he’d ever watched came flying at him. This was too much. He hit the man lying there so still, seeing the impact of his fist, the jarring of the flesh, but no response. Well, he wasn’t going to just sit there and watch his friend die. He was going to go down fighting… for both of them.

Taking another great gulp of the night air, he bent again and exhaled it into Viggo’s lungs. Every five seconds, he counted off and bent down to repeat the sequence… count and breathe… count and breathe. He resolved to keep on till he passed out, if it came to that. He was nearly at the point of hyperventilating from both the stark terror consuming him, as well as respiration for two.

Finally… finally he felt movement, a different, weak struggling. He sat up and saw the life back in Viggo’s eyes, but he couldn’t breathe still. Sean turned him to the side and thumped him on the back. The man heaved and water spewed from his lungs as he tried to fill them on his own. After several more wracking heaves, he vomited up a lot of fluid, and at last, seemed to be breathing independently. Sean, kneeling beside him, tried to gather Viggo into his arms, but he pushed him away. “No…” His voice was hoarse, a death-rattle. “Don’t…don’t touch me.”

Sean lowered his upper body in supplication, but he was ignored. Viggo continued to rasp in air, and after a while, levered himself into a sitting position. Relief washed over Sean now, as well as the true picture of what could have happened. He knew people played all sorts of sex games… breath control… and that sometimes things went wrong and they died. This was something he’d always chosen to overlook. His stomach turned sickly; he crawled over to the side of the ledge closest his lawn and puked over the edge. The spasms went on a long while; he dry-heaved awash in the unsurety of Viggo’s health, what would happen now to their relationship, and really, his own mental stability if things were beyond repair.

He hadn’t heard the slow dragging of another body across the cedar boards. A strangely fragile touch on his shoulder alerted him of Viggo there, right behind him. At that one small gesture of comfort, Sean lost it entirely; he broke down and sobbed silently, Viggo’s cool arm thrown around him and his body slowly coming into contact. “What… what was I thinking?”

Viggo simply held him and made no effort to stop his stream-of-conscious reactions. “I love you too much, Viggo.” At this, there was a small sound, but no words.

“I wanted to have you as mine… to the extent I could control yer life and very breath, but I don’t want that at the same time. It is your free will to choose me, or not.” It struck Sean that he was talking more to himself than to his partner. “But no, I had to go and mess with things, eh? It… it was a sexual thing. I thought it would be a huge turn on. It was… in thought. Not in deed.” His breath caught again, and he hope what would be the last time now, he let the tears run silently, shaking like he was chilled to the bone.

“Love you, Sean… no matter what you do. But that… never again.”

This was barely a whisper; it pained Sean to hear the near-loss still residing in Viggo’s throat. He wondered how he’d ever look the man in the eyes again, with this thing between them. Another ritualistic phrase appeared in his immediate thoughts. Though he hadn’t been raised in that particular church, it was one familiar the world over, he was sure. “Bless me, father, for I have sinned…”

“’M not yer father…” Viggo coughed, then continued. “And I don’t believe in sin. Only consequences.”

Thinking about that, of what it all meant, Sean waiting a long while till he asked, “Did you see a tunnel… with the light at the end?”

“No… I saw nothing. It was just this, then red, then dark. But I heard you. I heard your voice.” He was starting to shiver. The air was cooler, and added to the recent trauma, Sean knew he needed to get him inside. Viggo had another question, though. “Did you get what you needed out of it?”

Gathering up his friend’s awkward body, Sean answered him, “No. In all honesty, no. But I’ll never try it again. Holding you under was a rush, and I came really hard while you were fighting me and all. I guess you can’t have it all, though. Wanted to do this miraculous thing, bring you back to life. Didn’t count the costs…”

“But that’s life, isn’t it, Sean?” Viggo’s arm went around his neck, and he allowed himself to be picked up bodily. “What is it but one risk after another? I understand. I wanna do things too, that I’d never have the balls to say… well, maybe now I do.”

Somehow, they got themselves into the house, all the way to Sean’s room, and into bed. Viggo was in no condition to do anything but lie there or sleep. Eventually he did; Sean was awake long into the night. He remembered the rituals they’d played at, things that floated up out of their collective distant memories. They were truly not meant for the here and now, were they? The two of them were mythical beings, trapped in an age of fact and instant information. Perhaps nothing would ever satisfy his itch to be more than what he was. Till then, he had Viggo.

Fin.


End file.
